Yahoo Finance Xcel Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:XEL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Xcel Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:XEL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024
Xcel Energy Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.88, expectations were $0.78. Xcel Energy Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Hello, and welcome to Xcel Energy First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Melissa, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Questions will only be taken from institutional investors, reporters can contact media relations with inquiries and individual investors and others can reach out to Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the call over to Paul Johnson, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Paul Johnson: Good morning, and welcome to Xcel Energy's 2024 First Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me today are Bob Frenzel, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Van Abel, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, we have other members of the management team in the room to answer your questions if needed. This morning, we'll review our 2024 first quarter results and highlights, discuss recent wildfires and our mitigation efforts and share recent business developments. Slides accompanying today's call are available on our website. Please note, that we've changed our presentation, as a result, we no longer refer to electric and natural gas margin. Instead, we'll discuss changes in revenue and cost of goods sold from the income statement.
Please note that these most fluctuations and cost of electric fuel and natural gas are recovered through regulatory mechanisms and are generally earnings neutral. As a reminder, some of the comments during today's call may contain forward-looking information, significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and SEC filings. Today, we'll discuss certain measures that are non-GAAP measures. Information on comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations are included in earnings release. With that, I'll turn over to Bob.
Bob Frenzel: Thank you, Paul, and good morning and welcome everyone. It's been two months since wildfires impacted our Texas neighbors, and before Brian walks through our financial results, I'd like to discuss the actions we're taking to protect the public and to strengthen our system's resiliency in the states that we serve. In February, multiple wildfires were ignited in Texas and from the outset of those fires, our focus has been on the people and the communities in the panhandle and on the safety and the wellbeing of our coworkers and their families there, I want to thank all the first responders, emergency personnel, state and local employees, and our own SPS employees who worked tirelessly in support of our customers and our communities during and after the event.
They provided wildfire response, community assistance, relief services, and worked tirelessly in the field to restore essential services. Been to the panhandle and I've witnessed the impacted areas, and I can speak for the entire Xcel Energy team, when I say that we are saddened by the losses and we will stand with the panhandle community as we recover, rebuild, and renew that area as we have for over 100 years. Xcel Energy has acknowledged that our distribution poles appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire and the smaller reefer fire, which quickly burned into the Smokehouse Creek fire footprint. We dispute claims that Xcel Energy acted negligently in maintaining and operating its infrastructure. In addition, we do not believe that our facilities caused the way to dose or the Grapevine Creek fires and believe that their additions were caused by distribution lines owned by other companies.
In an effort to expedite relief and recovery in the community, we've established a claims processes for those who have property or livestock loss in the Smokehouse Creek fires, and are actively settling a number of claims. So far, 46 claims have been submitted, and as of April 22, Xcel Energy and SPS have been named as defendants in 15 lawsuits. Based on the most current information, we believe it's probable that we incur a loss due to the Smokehouse Creek wildfire and accrued a liability of $215 million, which is offset by an insurance receivable since it's lower than our approximately $500 million insurance. Please note that the $215 million loss accrual of preliminary estimate, which reflects the low end of a range and is subject to change based on new information, more information on Smokehouse Creek.
Please see our disclosures and our earnings release and our Form 10-Q. By all utilities, we're experiencing profound changes in weather and climate related impacts on our operations. As a result, we must continue to evolve our operations for these unparalleled dynamics. Risk mitigation and system resiliency has long been a priority for Xcel Energy continued into the future. Our strategy consists of three phases. First, immediate near term response. Second, regulatory activities needed to address comprehensive wildfire mitigation and resiliency plans. Third, additional state and federal legislation that could be valuable. Part of our first phase, we've accelerated risk reduction initiatives across our system, including accelerating full inspections and replacements, as well as operational actions such as proactive de-energized lines, and adjusting recloser settings, known as power safety, power shutoffs, and enhanced power line safety settings.
But we've been operating under an approved wildfire planning Colorado since 2020. As part of our second phase strategy, we will file updated wildfire mitigation plans in our respective states, beginning with an updated Colorado WMP later this quarter. The plans incorporate industry learnings that are tailored to our unique geographies and risk profiles. New and expanded actions include increased vegetation management, accelerated pole inspections, hardening and replacements, distribution undergrounding segmentation and covered conductor programs, transition line hardening and or rebuilds, enhanced recloser settings and proactive de-energize of lines, and situational awareness programs, including weather stations, cameras, and other monitoring software.
Later this year, we intend to file a system resiliency plan that will include wildfire mitigation at SPS contemplated under recent Texas law. And the third component of our strategy is to continue to step up our efforts to innovate and plan for evolving climate and wildfire risk. We know that our ability to enable a clean energy transition and to deliver an affordable product to our customers is predicated on maintaining a reasonable cost of capital. And we believe that proactive legislation at a state and federal level is a potential vehicle to ensure that our customers continue to receive affordable, reliable, sustainable, and safe power service. We aren't doing this alone. We're working across the industry with peer utilities, industry groups such as EEI and EPRI, partner of energy, federal, state, local agencies, first responders, our labor partners, and countless others.
While we need to reduce wildfire risk, our core operations remain strong and our investment opportunities robust. During the first quarter, we made significant progress on our clean energy transition and resource plans. In February, we filed our resource plan for the NSP system, which proposes to add 6,400 megawatts of new resources and extend the lives of our Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear facilities past 2050. The proposed plan reduces carbon emissions by more than 80%, while increasing customer bills by approximately 1% annually. We anticipate the decision on our proposal by the Minnesota Commission in 2025. In New Mexico, the commission accepted our resource plan. We proposed approximately 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts, new generation by 2030.
We anticipate issuing an RFP for these resource needs this summer. And finally, the Minnesota Commission recently approved our updated transportation electrification plan, and we filed an updated transportation electrification plan in New Mexico in April. We've also made continued progress with several economic and commercial development projects in February, we announced the working with Microsoft to bring a new data center to our retiring Sherco coal facility. The proposed data center is positioned to be 1 of our largest customers in Minnesota and is projected to bring jobs and investments to the community. In March, Meta broke ground on its previously announced data center that will be powered by NSP Minnesota. Meta will provide funding for new infrastructure upgrades, including transmission lines to support the project, and the facility is slated to open in late summer 2025.
Accelerating proactively worked with data center developers, communities and stakeholders across our states to ensure that we can reliably and affordably serve this new demand while providing benefits to our other customers. With several additional opportunities in the pipeline, we expect data centers to drive further growth for the foreseeable future. Our employees are at the heart of these many accomplishments. Our team is composed of dedicated and hard-working and courageous employees are committed to serving our communities with same clean, reliable and affordable energy. For the 11th year in a row, Xcel Energy was honored as one of the world's most admired companies by Fortune Magazine, placing 2nd overall among the most admired gas electric company in the country.
For the fifth in row, Xcel Energy has been one of the world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere. Xcel is 1 of only 5 energy companies in the United States recognized this year. Xcel Energy also joined the Economic Opportunity Coalition, a public-private partnership with the U.S. government, where we committed to allocating 15% of our U.S.-based contract spending in the areas of energy supply, distribution, transition and clean energy small and underserved businesses by 2025. With that, I'll turn it over to Brian.
Brian Van Abel: Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. Turning to our financial results. Excel Energy had earnings of $0.88 per share for the first quarter of 2024 compared to $0.76 per share in 2023. The increase in earnings reflects our investment of approximately $8 billion over the last 5 quarters to improve resiliency and enable clean energy for our customers while delivering economic growth and vitality for our communities. The most significant earnings drivers for the quarter included the following: the impact of electric and natural gas rate reviews to recover our capital investments increased earnings by $0.12 per share. Lower O&M expenses increased earnings by $0.06 per share, reflecting lower labor and benefit costs, lower bad debt expenses and gains from a land sale for a data center.
Non-fuel riders recover capital investment increased earnings by $0.05. Offsetting these positive drivers were higher depreciation and amortization decreased earnings by $0.05 per share, reflecting our capital investment programs. Higher interest charges decreased earnings by $0.05 per share. In addition, other items combined to decrease earnings by $0.01 per share. W/A sales, year-to-date weather and leap year adjusted electric sales decreased by 0.3% and natural gas sales increased by 1.7% as compared to 2023. Please note that we have revised our projected electric sales growth to 1% to 2% for the year, largely due to declining use per customer and timing delays for expansions for some of our large C&I customers. However, we can certainly expect long-term electric sales to grow 3% annually.
During the quarter, we also made progress on a relatively light rate this calendar. In April, the Texas Commission approved our electric rate case settlement without modification. The settlement reflects a rate increase of $65 million based on the black box settlement which includes an ROE of 9.55% and an equity ratio of 54.5% for AFUDC purposes. In our Minnesota Natural Gas Rate Case, we received interviewer customary last week. -- were scheduled for dry and expect the commission decision by year-end or in the first quarter of next year. And in our Colorado natural gas rate case, procedural schedule has been established that reflects interviewer testimony in July, hearings in September and a commission decision in the fourth quarter. Please see our earnings release for more details on our regulatory proceedings.
We are reaffirming our 2024 earnings guidance range of $3.50 to $3.60 per share, which is consistent with our long-term EPS growth objective of 5% to 7%. In addition, we've updated our key assumptions to reflect the latest information, which are detailed in our earnings release. With that, I'll wrap up with a [indiscernible] summary. We are proactively enhancing our operational and wildfire mitigation actions, commanded the risk to our systems to protect our customers from extreme weather. We continue to expect to deliver 2024 earnings within our guidance range as of half of the past 19 years. We are executing on our capital investment plan, including clean generation, transmission and distribution to support reliability and resiliency and economic development to support our communities.
And we remain confident we can deliver long-term earnings growth at or above the top end of our 5% to 7% range starting in 2025 and dividend growth at the low end of our 7% objective range. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we will now take questions.
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